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Hunting in Azeroth and beyond…

Cataclysm

So, my guild has gone 8/8 regular mode. We’re not the “Hard modes must be done!!!” kind of crowd, so what’s there to do to fill the WoW time? No, we haven’t given up on Dragon Soul, there are plenty of things to still do there including getting our Rogue his legendary. But the question remains, short of continuing to beat ourselves against the same content over and over again…what is there to do?

Well, for one…ALL the previous content!!! Sure some of the much older content from Vanilla and BC is completely solo-able, but most Wrath raid content is not, nor are Tiers 11 or 12. And to be perfectly honest, there are some nice rewards for players out there to be had.

Transmog Gear: There is gear a plenty available that is absolutely stunning to look at. I am especially fond of anything from Ulduar. I happen to be particular about Mimiron’s Repeater.

Achievement Points, Mounts, and Titles OH MY!: Now, I know not everyone cares about APs, but I am a total achievement lover! They are there for the taking. Additionally many meta achievements still carry various titles and mounts upon completion. Including the beautiful Ulduar proto-drakes.

BiS gear: No, Ulduar and ICC do not have usable items, but heroic modes for T11 and T12 could in fact still provide upgrades or even BiS items based on class & spec.

Development: Some of the encounters can be difficult to still over come even if out-geared/leveled. They can be great opportunities to allow some folks to use alts, try out a new spec, or a new roll. Want to see if that Holy Pally really can tank in Prot…run them as MT in BoT or BWD before heading to DS.

PvP: Doing guild BGs can be a lot of fun, especially with having a more organized team.

FUN!: Seriously. Its fun to sometimes kick back and beat the snot out of some of these old instances. Our 10 man had about 45 min left in raid, so we knocked out Naxx40, MC, and BWL in quick order. MC was particularly fun where essentially 2 people ran to each boss and then we all met up at Rag. I think MC took us 10, maybe 15 min in total. it.was.fun!

I know, not all of these kinds of things are everyone’s cup of tea, but if you give some of them a fair chance you may find them enjoyable…more so than you’d have thought. You’ll notice I did not suggest leveling an alt. At this point, most players have had more than enough opportunity to level additional toons and classes. While getting a 5 man guild group together to Dungeon run can be fun, I really was focusing on what your raid team can do in lieu of the same raid zone over and over again.

What will you be doing with your raid group once you’ve completed your benchmark for progression?

With today’s patch we have some Hunter specific changes that will boost all 3 specs DPS to hopefully be more in line with the Legendary toting DPS classes numbers (in line: meaning closer gap…but we won’t be overtaking them any time soon). Additionally some of these buffs will specifically help Survival Hunters out…

Here they are for the Hunter class…

Aspect of the Hawk now grants roughly 35% more attack power.

Deterrence now also reduces damage taken by 30% while active.

Black Arrow now ticks every 2 seconds for 20 seconds, as opposed to every 3 seconds for 15 seconds. The total damage dealt by the ability is unchanged.

Lock and Load no longer benefits Arcane Shot, nor is it consumed by Arcane Shot.

So #2 gives us a nice damage mitigation for those things not already blocked (which feels an awful lot like everything most days). #1 certainly aids all three specs in raw dps. But numbers 3 and 4 are SV specific.

The Black arrow change will increase proc chance on LnL…nice change. The LnL adjustment will allow for more delicious Arcane Shots as well as Explosive Shots. No more accidental Explosive Shot consumptions on the LnL proc by an accidental Arcane Shot cast and allows us to weave Arcanes in with LnL to bleed focus. If you were not already glyphed for Improved Arcane Shots, you definitely should now.

I’m curious to know why there aren’t buffs specific to Beastmastery & Marksmanship. One could argue the LnL changes are merely quality of life changes to fix an unintended affect, and that the proc rate/format for Black Arrow is also a correction to unexpected behavior (using traps vs BA to proc LnL). So truly its all about a flat dps boost for all 3 specs.

Is this what the devs were thinking? Are they trying to specifically shepherd us to SV as the primary Hunter dps spec? Thoughts to ponder.

Sorry folks, its been a good month since a post. December is a busy work month and the Holiday season makes it even busier due to home life! Playing Santa for 3 kids is always very very time consuming!

I have not had much WoW time in the last 30 days. Enough only to be demoted to “casual” in my guild which prompted a /gquit from me. Excessive? perhaps. But I do not see eye to eye with the new RL & Officer direction. I’m not one to make waves, and seeing as how I am merely DPS…I’m replaceable. I will find somewhere to play that makes me happy, I feel welcome and appreciated, and ultimately where I want to log in because its fun and enjoyable…not an obligation.

I have some comments about the LFR that I will get out in another week or so. Completing the content within LFR has soured me on doing it in a 10/25 format to some extent. I just don’t feel the same completionist drive. I suspect others may feel the same way, perhaps its just me!

In the mean time, I am guildless. I’ve spoken to a few folks who have great raiding guilds and teams and I could settle in nice and snug and contribute…BUT…I just don’t have it in me for 4 – 5 nights of raiding any more. I would love to do it, but with 3 kids, work, coaching, and most importantly a spouse who has become a WoW-widow the last few years; I need to do right by all of them. 2 nights would be perfect, 3 acceptable. If anyone needs a Survival Hunter for 2 or so nights of raiding, let me know. I’m all ears to talk.

Otherwise, I’ll be busy working on old achieves I still can do; and leveling another hunter with a cute Space Goat Priest over on Terenas – US!!!

So I have been working alongside my spouse to level her Draenei Disc Priest & my Worgen SV Hunter. We hit level 25 and I suggested, “How about a PUG?” She inquired as to what this meant and I explained:

A PUG (pick-up group) is a dungeon run with 5 players being pulled from anywhere and dropped into a level appropriate instance for them to complete. The advantage is that you would most likely get a fair amount of experience for each kill made, a large bucket of experience from completing the dungeon itself, along with additional XP from completing any quests specific to that dungeon. I also said you will get some nice gear to continue leveling with from the boss kills and the bonus satchel you get on completing the random itself.

She concurred, “Sounds like it’s a lot of fun, what are we waiting for?!” I agreed and said let’s go…and then the “fun” began.

Now, to be honest, she is still learning. She is learning the fundamentals of the game here: moving using the mouse, controlling your camera angle, using spells and abilities on the go, key and mouse binds, identifying party members, setting focus, who to heal and when, even that sure-fired aggravating simple move of jumping over an expanse (I tried to tell her we all fell a hundred times trying to jump past the expanse of rocks in BFD). All of this is then coupled with the pressures of: playing with new people whom she does not know, failing the group as a whole (specifically letting the tank die), learning the dungeons themselves!! We as seasoned players forget what it was like to truly be new!

Now I have insisted on mentioning to a party upon zoning in, “Hey, the healer is new to the game and still learning, let’s please take it nice and easy.” You’d think folks would understand what this was like and say something like “Okies! No problem we’ve all been there. Just follow the tank and keep them alive. Stay close to the hunter. If you have any issues or questions, just ask in p-chat!”

“OMG! NOOB! Keep up with the tank dammit! You run at MY pace! HEALER what are you doing, why did I die. Rez me! NAO! Why did I have to run with bads. She isn’t new, you just suck.” /sigh. Well…what a great taste of PUGs for her to get right off the bat eh?

So here’s the funny part to me. Blizzard wants to push their product more. They want more players. Well guys…here is your issue. The PLAYERS are standing in your way! She had me sitting by her side at the table. I was able to explain where to go. Who was doing what. What to focus on. I was able to help her. Coach her through the first few dungeons. Now she caught on quickly and soon needed far less direction or instructions even in a dungeon she had not been in yet. She was learning, but I can tell she gets somewhat frustrated still. I also see her running through some of these dungeons at break neck speeds: which means she is not learning any of the lore that goes along with these places, appreciating the art and design involved with creating them, and while learning her specific role of healing a tank – not fully understanding the party roles and how various classes fill those roles! The other players are not interested nor inclined to take the time to do this! We had tanks running off not allowing for a few moments for people to collect quest items, loot corpses, skin/mine/gather using their profession skills. I was in one group where 4 players ran back to turn something in, the tank ran forward to continue on…while the norm might have been to keep moving the group as a whole clearly chose to do something else. The tank freaked to say the least.

Players like him are rolling in full bind on account Heirloom gear. They have all their slots pretty much filled with no real need to compare any items. Players like her need to stop and look at drops and determine if they are even appropriate for their class/spec, let alone if the item is an upgrade or not. She has rolled a couple of times on strength items not realizing it and has been screamed at for being a noob and an idiot!

This same fool had the benefit of “learning” the game and now affords no such understanding of her “learning” the game. They are arrogant, snotty, impatient, immature, aggravating, dehumanizing, insolent, mean, cruel, rapacious, aloof, pretentious, brash, vain.

I don’t know anyone who would WANT to play alongside these types of people, and kudos to her for lasting this long and not giving up, even getting better.

PUGs are awful. We all knew this already. So, why do we have them? Are they really helping the game? From where I am standing…I don’t see how.

Up next: Recap of all the Blizzcon goodness from around the blog-sphere.

So what do you do when you find yourself banging your head over and over again on the same issue? Well, there are multiple options ahead of you…the least objectionable in my humble opinion? Move on.

Yes, that’s right. GIVE UP! Concede defeat. Move the frell on!!!

Ok, so I do not mean do the above and never return. What I mean is to move on and try something new. Circle back again another day. When you are finding you can’t over come a hurdle, its best to back off and try something different for a time. That is certainly not going to solve the problem, but it will ensure you don’t become stuck in quicksand.

Our raid team was at a roadblock with heroic Lord Ryolith. You can argue that its too little dps. Not enough hps during phase 2? Perhaps the positioning is off? Maybe the steering is faulty? RNG?!!? Does it even matter at this point? Reality is we weren’t getting it. There are 2 choices when you are in this situation, and we’ve all been here, you can forge ahead and keep slamming your head against that wall; or trying something different. Take a break from it.

Now personally, I like the notion of changing gears and doing something fun! Real life example: Your work team having issues, in-fighting – go for ice cream! Take them out to play mini golf. Watch a movie. Even just a simple lunch break out of the office or after work round of drinks can be enough to snap people out of their bad mojo and get things moving in the right direction.

The issue we’re talking about here is “state of mind”. You need to clear people’s heads and continuing to another challenge may not help matters. In game I like to think of FUN things to do that will clear heads and restore a sense of fun. Raid on a capital city anyone? Maybe old school raids? Perhaps a specific achievement run for folks? A mount run of some kind? I could go on, but you get the idea.

In short you need to determine what your raid group needs to unwind and settle their thoughts. Allow them to clear their minds and refocus their energies to the proper course. Our raid team hung in there slamming their heads. We downed him last night. Everything finally clicked and we managed to finish him off in good order.

This doesn’t always work, but it did this time! 🙂

To sum it up…finding yourself hitting a wall with leveling, raiding, PvP, any in-game challenge? Step back. Walk away. Do something else for a minute or hour, or day. Try to unwind. Try to take a break. Try to do anything BUT what you were doing. Clear your head and thoughts and then come back ready to roll. Being refocused and engaged on your task will lead to success. Trust me on this one.